The first thing Margret Pierce always noticed about someone was their hands.
creepy at first yes, but listen. She is in medicine, surgery to be specific so anyone she meets is usually in the same profession.
hands have played a large part in her life.
she remembers her (dearkindgonetoosoon) mother laying her over her lap and spanking her with those same hands that cooked the most delicious of meals.
hands are something people take for granted until they have to go without even just one digit
she remembers how her daddy would call out to her anytime anything was broken in the house and how they would fix it together.
(lightbulbs, leaky pipes, faulty wiring. all except the cars)
they were actually working on what would be her (early, duh) graduation gift when he accidentally chopped his pinkie off.
the drive there was so intense considering she's tiny and didn't yet have her license but her mom had taken her car in for service and even though she didn't realise then, her mama had gone for a full tune up herself.
by the time they got there;
'pinkie placed into a cooler bag with some ice and the place where it used to be has been wrapped in gauze, I'm going to study medicine, thank you very much so I know what steps to take when one hopes to reattach a limb (or digit)' she thinks to herself until she sees her dad's amused stare and the vicious side eye the attending is giving and 'oops? guess I said that out loud,' she grimaces as they begin to control the bleeding then dad says;
"I don't want it reattached."
'What?' that's one of the very few times her brain has failed her.
father and daughter go back and forth but medical staff has to listen to the patient if he is coherent enough to make decisions for himself and for fuckssake where is her mom because this man is driving her up the walls. for someone who is the calmest in a family of hot heads, he sure as fuck is acting pretty recklessly but she is not looking for an ass-whooping so she says her piece, loses and goes to the waiting area in order to sulk until her mom rushes in, looking unkempt (which is definitely unlike her but hey, her husband just chopped off his finger so she's allowed some room for less than perfect)
(her parents will always be perfect to her), she thinks with a soft smile on her face as her mother peppers little kisses on her father's forehead in relief that his injury wasn't much worse.
They fix him up with one less finger and off they go, her dad telling horrible jokes because of the pain medication they gave him.
Her hands learn-are taught-are forced to be steady during med school.
she can't really expect to be a doctor with shaky hands. so when her professor calls her out on her less than stellar incisions, she understandably freaks out.
she's shy and freaky and all those words but all college is is an inescapable popularity contest where the winners rule over an mythical kingdom so she's f i n e with being the "dorky", "childish", "weird" kid. (the crying and forced smiles she puts on for her parents during their Skype sessions will definitely be worth it when she graduates as valedictorian because fuck Rebecca Williamson and her popularity and her still unexplained hatred of Maggie.)
(She also briefly wonders why her parents seem to be fighting a whole lot more and obviously needs to investiga-hey, he's cute)
Back to the "cool kids", she avoids them and tries not to curse them out because while she's definitely not as sweet and unproblematic as her mother thinks but she's also not gonna start any fights until one of them mentions that maybe she should have stayed behind with her peers.
And she should have left it alone.
Turned the other cheek.
Walked away.
But Margaret Helen Pierce is nothing, if not thorough.
so she thoroughly decks his ass and hurts her hand in the process but none of those assholes come near her again and she aces her exams which is just the cherry on top of that year.
(she barely speaks of the cadaver and her crush on a gay man and how she really has always been weird)
She uses those same hands to wait tables when her mom says she needs to get out more over the summer breaks and so she waits on rich people hand and foot.
she bumps into one of those rich asshole kids who looks a bit older than her one day and he barely spares her a glance while his friends laugh at her for being covered in shrimp sauce but during that two second place, she saw the most beautiful man she's ever seen with his blue eyes and brown skin and holy fuck they might be assholes but they sure look good.
as she begins to clean up a pair of hands help her and she looks up to find an early 20's man with gorgeous blue eyes, curly hair, beautiful lightly melanin skin and a jawline that could cut diamonds (pfft, as if she could afford diamonds)
"Sorry for my friends," he gently says.
giving a small smile,
"sorry for ruining what probably costs more than I earn," is her response as she gestures to his dirtied khakis.
and adds in playfully;
"and sorry your friends are complete dill holes."
he gives a genuine laugh and his eyes light up (nope, no poems about dead bodies this time around) and she grins back.
they talk all summer, phone calls, they meet up where his people wouldn't expect him to be and her parents love him.
She likes him well enough and they become good friends really fast.
Eli is just that easy to like.
then summer ends and he has to go back to Yale in order to complete his business degree so he can take over his moms Billion $ company but they keep emailing one another and they stay good friends.
(summers come and summers go and she turns 25 and has a steady job and he's 29 and has to marry someone from his world)
He invites her to his wedding and she sees how shaky his hands are as he tries to tie his tie so she takes over and helps him.
"We could have been great," he whispers, hands encircling her waist.
she speaks so softly to try and avoid breaking this moment of theirs and cups his face with her hands;
"yeah, but you probably wouldn't be a billionaire anymore and I'd have to pay for my own meals when we go out."
he laughs and she places a kiss on his cheek, wishes him the best and walks to her car and for some obscene reason thinks back to when she was 22 and her parents told her about her adoption and just drives straight to the courthouse because damnit she really wants to know her biological history.
her hands file through every cabinet to try and find information on her adoption because for some reason they don't digitalise everything but whatever and she eventually finds it.
her holy grail.
She flips through the pages and finds the name.
"Ellis Grey.." she sighs.
its not easy to tell the people you love the most in the world that you're going looking for the person who abandoned you but her dad supports her and gives her his now normal 9 finger hug and her mom just pouts but relents and sends her on her way with a million kisses.
her hands grip the stirring wheel as she drives to the airport and her stomach is flipping like she's both nervous and excited and she smiles because holy fuck, she's doing it.
finding out your biological mother is dead is kind of hard but not terribly so. she didn't know Ellis. she just feels a bit of a hollow space then her phone rings and it flashes "MOM" with a picture of her and her dearest mama on the screen and she knows she's set.
Her sister on the other hand is…difficult and hard to pin down to say the least.
Both her problematic, but brilliant sisters are fucking messes but she is one too so..
So yeah, hands matter a lot to to Dr. Margaret Pierce so when Dr. Jackson Avery refuses to shake hers for no reason (okaaaay, so she insulted him but whatever.) she's so taken aback and a bit hurt that she doesn't truly register how familiar his eyes look.
they work together, side by side, hand by hand and she eventually becomes very close with him.
(she tries to ignore how his ex-wife says that Jackson has feelings for her because that is a ball game she does not even wanna play.)
(Can you blame her though? she just found out her mother was cheating with their mechanic, her parents got divorced and then her mom died all in the space of less than a year so she's had her fill of drama for now)
then Jackson mentions the country club she used to work for in Boston and how some girl once spilled shrimp cocktail sauce all over his shoes and his mother tore him a new one that holy fucking shit balls, its that really good looking rich asshole.
"huh," is all she thinks to herself hands on the bed of their patient as the move to load him onto the helicopter.
they hit some turbulence (IN THE FUCKING AIR) and blood sprays all over both of them and all of a sudden his hands are on her face, wiping the blood from her eyes and her stomach drops because hell no. she cannot have feelings for him.
the guy who married his co-worker, has a baby with her, whose mom is married to her "dad" (but is he really?) and one of her confidants outside of Ellis' house.
so she starts dating Clive but his hands don't fit perfectly into hers but thats just life.
shit isn't perfect.
Then Clive turns out to be a complete fuckboy and she watches drinky redhead smurf April and "is-an-asshole-to-everyone-but-her-"Tom flirt(?) in the middle of her living room while Priya takes Jackson by the hand and they wish her goodnight and what a night.
then the interns knock at her door but she's quite exhausted so bye and then He knocks and before she knows it his hands are on her neck, pulling her close then moving to her waist and her hands are around his neck and oh my fuck. He's actually perfect.
They have a few hiccups,
his ex-wife jumping for one (but mainly because he kept that from her) but they navigate that one well and oh fuck yes, right there. those hands shouldn't be doing anything else but touching every inch of her skin she thinks as they make love for the first time (and every other time after that)
hands play an important role in her life, she thinks, watching her fiancé becomes her husband after she puts that ring on his left hand ring finger.
(also something about them now being Drs. Avery-Pierce)